A blog about random things and sometimes about my work translating and developing KDE and anything

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Users and lusers

I'm starting to get fed up of lusers that think they have the right to insult developers, use bad wording and in general being totally non respecting for the work other human being is going for them for free.

This kind of weird individual also thinks that by using bad manners its problems will be fixed more promptly, sorry but no, this is not a bar fight and being the rudest won't get you anything else than ignorance even if your bug is genuine.

I will not point to any of their posts, there have been too many lately, it's easy to recognize them and they know who they are.

At the contrary I will link to a mail by Jochen Trumpf so you can all learn how people is supposed to comment and contribute, in a clear, precise and constructive way, and as Thiago always says "If you got a patch it's much better", but if you have not it's ok too. To all lusers out there, please learn from Jochen.

10 comments:

The end users _always_ sees themselves as clients, no matter if the service/ product is free or paid for, and thus, complain, demand features / bug fixes, and in general, are usually ungrateful.

Most outlets deal with it by generating some compensation for themselves. Usually, it means monetary compensation, by using ads, premium services and such.The FOSS volunteers, as I see it, expects compensation in the form of social acceptance, praise, and ego. It usually doesn't happen..

My advice - find a way to generate money from your work, and suddenly, all those lusers becomes costumers, and you, as an solution provider, can see each problem they raise as a business opportunity, charge accordingly, and be happier.

Konqueror just crashed on me while I was checking something in another tab, so now I have to retype everything I wrote. I'm certain the developers had the very good reason to avoid creating separate processes for tabs, because Microsoft and Apple don't do it. Which must be superior, because they have developers that don't show up at work unless you give them cash.

Anyway...

Nowadays a lot more people call themselves developers than every before, which unfortunately means that there are a many more people who have no idea of what what their library/application is actually supposed to do and much less how to do it.

Fittingly, it is exactly this type of developer who attracts lusers, because lusers have no idea what they want software to do.

P.S. When I taught myself how to design software, 4KB of executable code was a large program with a lot of functionality. It was also practically bug-free because you made damn sure your 8-bit counters didn't overflow and you knew _exactly_ how many bytes you had left, before your dynamic data overwrote a jump table.

I can understand your frustration. I am a simple KDE user and I get offended when I read some of the comments on bugs.kde.org. There are a few really annoying people out there. I don't think they mean badly, though. They are simply uneducated about how free software works, have a bad day and then pester the developers. At least that is what I hope is the reason.

When I encounter such remarks, I try to put them in their place and appease the situation, but I wish I was more active and helpful to you developers than that. You are doing an amazing job, creating a free software world for yourselves, us users and for future generations of developers to build upon. This is a very important contribution to a free and better world and I hope that you know this and therefore experience some sort of gratification. :)

I know exactly who you're talking about :-) Well, there's been a few lately actually. Thanks for your comments on bko, I was biting my tongue for a few days before replying. You do your best to be polite and informative and help these people and then they start waving their sense of entitlement at you like you're an idiot and they know best, it doesn't make you want to help them further. This stuff is a lot harder than the lusers realise, but they won't listen when you try to explain. Yes, we screw up occasionally, but then rubbing our noses in it doesn't help. A bit of reason and consideration goes a long way.

Fu.... and forget these lusers, there are so many who are grateful and happy about the work of the developers. Sitting back and looking at this amazing KDE Desktop in front of me, which makes my windows and mac using friend full of envy, there is just one thought in my mind: Hey you developers, excellent job, keep it coming!

Perhaps the "lusers" would be so rude if the developers weren't either. The OSS philosophy when it comes to user-interaction is, well, less than desirable. Bugs go unfixed, feature requests are ignored, developers often retort with "show me the code or shut up", or "it's fixed in CVS, check out commit so and so and apply these patches" (as if most users can handle that)...all the while, the developers focus on their pet features and dismiss anything that isn't fun. Well, if you want users to like you, do things that users like. If you just want to scratch an itch, then stop complaining about the users, because you are failing them intentionally. It seems as though a lot of developers want to have their cake and eat it too. Keep up that attitude and I'm sure Linux on the desktop will continue to flourish...

@J: So you are telling me that non FOSS companies fixes the bugs you report and also implements your wishes? You are a really lucky man. And you totally fail to read my blog, i don't want users to like me, i care the less about that, i want users to BE RESPECTFUL when talking to me, that's all i'm asking.